I fail to see why that devalues this list of books. It's not like he's _only_ listing his own book.

Arguably, it devalues this list of books because it calls into question its credibility and its author's seriousness.

While I generally do not trust information from "advertisements", in this case I don't see how this is any worse than including a list of sources in the bibliography. What this could be is an attempt to use those other books to sell the author's through some reflected glory (or SEO-fu) but in that case, the author is still incentivized to recommend good books.

If this was a pure advertising piece, I might agree. In this case, it's more "hey I wrote a book on this, these are other books that are great". That's kinda different at least in my mind.

You mean you've _never_ bought a book for its bibliography?

Just to note, I made the site to interview authors and get their 5 favorite books on something they are passionate about. And I promote their book alongside the list to help them bump into readers. Authors generally just want to share something they are passionate about; it isn't about money, as nobody is writing a book to make money.

It is a great way to meet books, I think :)

And has been fun to build!